Posts Tagged ‘publishing’

[I am just testing out the WordPress ‘aside’ format] – To say that whereas journalists have traditionally been paid by revenues which come through advertising (by their institution) – newer purveyors of news and opinion: bloggers, and other social media stars in their own right, can earn money from publishing on an individual basis. Personally organising their own advertising or sponsorship to appear on their blogs or other social channels. They hope or even expect to be paid in exchange for covering stories from brands, and why shouldn’t they? OFT rules on this are clear – it is prohibited to use editorial content to promote a product, where the trader has paid for the promotion, without making that clear in the content. Disclosure is key.

Just quick props to Nieman Journalism’s new design feature (well new to me anyway) that quietens the right-hand nav as you scroll down to read. It’s all too easy to become tempted away, or just annoyingly destracted by what’s going on around your focus, to the left or right of a web article. Nieman deals with this neatly here – the right hand nav’s suggested links are faded out – becoming dark, with text coming into sharp focus, whenever the user hovers over. Nice detail, helps you stay on the article at hand, whilst allowing the site to keep their desired / suggested next steps on your visit just a nudge of the mouse / finger away.

The toughest thing for the probabilistic magazine brand is to find some kind of coherence. In the traditional sense, coherence as a package of interrelated content is gone. The story is the unit that matters, after all. But a big part of the value we add *is* structuring the world in a consistent way. So, the question becomes: what can form the basis for a new coherence for magazines?

One answer that is specific to The Atlantic but extensible is very old: moral purpose. This magazine was founded as an abolitionist publication and that helped structure the varied voices that ran in its pages through the early days.

stop and think about your marketing efforts, especially if they include ‘old school’ things like developing printed magazines that are mailed to clients… Turn your sights on producing content that’s available in different iterations, depending on the end consumers’ (your target audience) individual preferences… Be paying attention to the analytics on your website and corporate blog and watch how those numbers of people accessing your site from mobile devices is continuing to grow at a rapid pace. Consider producing those magazines in app form or some other digital form that complements today’s mobile lifestyle.

Bloggers and sites need revenue to survive… so sponsored content and links are a norm we have become used to. Most web users understand and appreciate its place to help support the content and engagement they love… they grasp that flexible online business models are integral to quality and innovation. But the key from a publisher’s perspective and any brand placing content – is disclosure. iVillage is currently doing this in a neat way on its home page – highlighting, and tactfully disclosing content on its site that provides a revenue stream via sponsorship:

For formal guidance on staying within the law when sponsoring content or bloggers online, follow the links below:

I’ve used Google Reader many times to create bundles of blogs for monitoring and outreach in line with topic interest areas. The beauty of it is once you have compiled a hard-hitting list of blog RSS feeds you can share them as a bundle with others on your team… without them even needing to know what RSS is. This also makes it particularly easy to hand over when moving on to the next project.

The tool is also very useful to integrate different bloggers’ material into sites from an editorial perspective – when I set up the Guardian Global Development blogosphere the display of external blogs was run via Google Reader. The highlighting of specific blogposts on the back-end was achieved via an editor or community co-ordinator simply starring posts from Reader’s blog-post view – again, making for a simple content management user experience.

So I thought it worth highlighting what Michael Tieso has done with his list of 160 independent travel bloggers – because it’s not often you see someone being as generous with their efforts identifying good blogs. He has used Google reader’s capacity to share blog bundles publicly – compiling a list of over 160 independent travel bloggers for anyone to subscribe to.

Fans will have 18,000 words of new Harry Potter content to devour in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, Rowling has deftly cornered the market on proceeds from the sale of her books online, without having to pay Apple or Amazon one galleon